Deadly Silence

On the one-year-anniversary of her brother's murder, Kiara Y. Colon weeps over a memorial in the driveway on Green Street where her brother Shaian Colon was killed by a shooter as he sat in a car on Oct. 11, 2006. (Craig Murray/The Enterprise)

Green Street in Brockton is a familiar but sometimes dangerous city stretch

Police get hundreds of calls to Green Street each year. Some calls are minor — loud noises, disturbances. Others are deadly.

By Maureen Boyle, Enterprise staff writer
   BROCKTON — The bullet hole pierced the second-floor bedroom window, shattered a decorative tabletop waterfall and struck the wall in Laura Price’s Green Street home.
   “It hit the wall by my computer, above the printer,” Price said. “If I was standing there, it would have hit me.”
   It was one of 568 times police were called to Green Street in 2006, a half-mile stretch of single- and multi-family homes that was one of the first urban blocks in the 1880s to get electricity in the country.
   Some of the calls were minor — loud noises, disturbances. Others were deadly.
   An examination of police calls by The Enterprise found:
   In 2006, police were called to Green Street 568 times for cases ranging from serving restraining orders to gunfire.
    Thirteen of those calls involved guns, gunfire or a man with a gun.
   Last year, there were 592 calls for service on the street.
   Of that number, 11 involved guns, gunfire or a report of a man with a gun.
   Drug dealing had gotten so bad along the stretch of Green Street between Main street and Warren Avenue that one apartment building owner once posted a sign proclaiming, “Drug Free Zone. No Drugs Sold Here.”
   “The landlord kicked out the other people who used to live here but people kept knocking on the door,” said Jose Rocario, whose family lives in the building. “That is when he put the sign there... Things are better now.”
   When Jean Polynice moved to Green Street last August, he knew little about the neighborhood except it was affordable. “When I told someone where I was moving, they said, ‘It is not a good street,’” he said.
   The issue is not the street but a small number of people, said Ward 2 City Councilor Michael Brady.
   “There are good neighbors there, some who have lived there from 30 years ago,” Brady said. “But when the people get out of jail, ....that’s when it starts up again.”
   Aimee Fulks and her family bought a home on Green Street six years ago because it was affordable — and believed the neighborhood was on the upswing.
    “When we have friends come over, I always tell them not to come in through that way,” she said, motioning towards the southern section of Green Street. “I tell them to come in a different way. ....I wish it was different.”
   Price, her neighbor whose window was shot, has lived in a single-family home on the western end of Green Street for 16 years and plans to stay until her daughter graduates from the local Catholic high school.
   The shooting two years ago was a shock, she said.
   She heard a man yelling on a phone across the way, then a bullet crashed through her window. “I was scared,” she admitted.
   Maria DePina lived for years on Hunt Street — another troubled neighborhood in the city — before moving to the middle part of Green Street and now is looking to move again.
   “I was told this was the ‘better’ end of Green Street,” she said. “There is no such thing as ‘the better end of Green Street,’” DePina said.